Erika Yoshino: MARBLE

Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film presents “MARBLE,” a solo exhibition of works by Erika Yoshino. This is Yoshino’s third solo exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery and features 17 works shot between 2014 and 2017.

The word ‘marble’ is derived from the ancient Greek ‘marmaron’ meaning ‘crystalline rock that shines in the light.’
Marble is a metamorphic rock, formed when limestone is subjected to intense heat, recrystallizing to create a beautiful, glossy stone.
Disparate materials are often fused within it.
A marble pattern is born on the surface of the vanilla-colored stone, as if someone has traced gentle lines on it.
The things I turn my camera on are all from daily life.
An image created by the light passing through the lens, appears on the film like a fragment of a rainbow.
A moment becomes eternity. An irreplaceable instant emerges on the surface of the print.
The title ‘MARBLE’ is a symbol of a complicated, enchanting time.
To me, they provide a key that allows me to discover freedom and hope.
Captivated by the beautiful resonance of the words, I try to recall their inspiring images and express them through photography.
I will be satisfied if I succeed in capturing even their slightest nuance.
Crystals of light seen through the lens.
My desire draws gentle lines on the white photographic paper.
Erika Yoshino, December 2017
Excerpted from the exhibition catalogue
“Photographs of Innocence and of Experience: Contemporary Japanese Photography vol. 14”
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 2017, p. 19

In this exhibition, Yoshino has likened her photographic expression, which she has rigorously confronted daily since she began making photographs, to marble of which the unique pattern is slowly created over many years in nature. Yoshino’s subjects are her everyday surroundings and her photographs require no explanation. Walking with camera in hand, she simply and coolly captures whatever happens to draw her eye. Allowing for inevitability and chance occurrences, she seeks interesting scenes, and things she does not know or understand. When she feels certain that she has seen it, she releases the shutter. Printing a sizable number of photographs, she juxtaposes and rearranges them to produce an accumulation of fragments of images that she wants to see, then goes shooting again. The repetition of this simple process—shooting and editing—creates a world with a unique ambiance in which time, memory and experience is condensed and deepened. Yoshino’s roots are in street snapshot and it is a subtle constant in her recent work as they are in Just Like the Radio (2011), which marked her transition from black and white to color. In “MARBLE,” the quietude and strength shown in NEROLI (2016) has formed a richer fold within the core of her independently developed sensibilities to time, which draw viewers into her unique worldview.

Erika Yoshino was born in Honjo City, Saitama Prefecture in 1970. She began photographing in 1989, and graduated from Tokyo College of Photography in 1994. As a student, Yoshino was influenced by the photographer Kiyoshi Suzuki; from the late 1990s on, she produced many black and white works in this mode of street photography. In 2010, she began producing works in color: her works, shot in and around Tokyo, are tranquil but forcefully draw their viewers in with their unique worldview. Yoshino’s major solo exhibitions include “ICE Echo Wave,” Ginza Nikon Salon, Tokyo (1995), “Enoshima Zero Meter,” Works H., Kanagawa (1996), “It’s a New Day,” Ginza Nikon Salon, Tokyo (1998), “Max Is Making Wax,” Viewing Room Yotsuya, YUMIKO CHIBA ASSOCIATES, Tokyo (2001), “Eleanor Rigby,” Yokohama Civic Art Gallery Azamino, Kanagawa (2008), “Just Like on the Radio,” Port Gallery T, Osaka (2011), “Digitalis,” Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film, Tokyo (2012) and “NEROLI,” Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film, Tokyo (2016). Group shows include “Eleven & Eleven: Korea Japan Contemporary Art,” The Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul (2002), “Black Out: Contemporary Japanese Photography,” The Japan Cultural Institute in Rome (2002, later traveled to Paris and Tokyo) and “Nonchalant,” 4-F Gallery, Los Angeles (2004). Her works are included in the collections of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.